Give Me Breath!

In several of my Jin Shin Jyutsu classes I was told that Mary Burmeister (who brought Jin Shin Jyutsu to the US from Japan) liked to say: “Give me breath, and it will heal anything.” This notion touched me deeply and stayed with me as I realized, more and more over the years, that breath really was the common denominator of all of the healing modalities I had tried out thus far. Whether there’s a conscious emphasis on deep breathing, as in many schools of meditation and yoga, or whether changes in breathing patterns are an unconscious byproduct of complementary treatments such as acupuncture or massage – it all comes down to breath being the most essential secret force of healing, a force often underutilized in our daily lives. But how to access this healer of all healers?
 
The longer I practiced Jin Shin Jyutsu self-help, the more it became clear to me that the Breath Mary spoke of, the “Breath that can heal anything,” was quite different from the regular breath I knew and was aware of whenever I happened to be focusing on my breathing. I realized that things shifted dramatically in my body and my emotional state whenever “I” was able to step aside and see my attention dissolve into the breathing activity itself without being engaged in thoughts or emotions. I had to allow myself to “be breathed” by life instead of being the “breather.” When I compared this experience with my experiences of entering deeper layers of breathing during Vipassana meditation, I realized that Jin Shin Jyutsu hand placements immensely facilitated my immersion in the Breath and made it much easier for me to delve into a deeper layer of breathing in a shorter amount of time.
 
In other words: whenever I practiced Jin Shin Jyutsu, either by holding fingers or by applying self-help flows, it was the body itself that facilitated a shift such that I could let go and immerse myself in this deeper, or shall I say, cellular breath. It was exactly this form of Breath that most effectively dissolved accumulations in my body and shifted my state of mind in the most dramatic way. I have noticed that whenever I accessed this kind of cellular breath my breathing changes in a way I had never experienced before. This adventurous new experience of a very different kind of breath flowing through my body made it very clear to me that there were many different stratospheres of breath – our most mysterious life force – and that there was still much to discover about its healing power for me …  and maybe for all of us.